STARR Site Certification

Sponsors are vetting sites before they ever reach out. STARR Certification puts you on their radar and gives you the tools to stay there.

Sponsors and CROs are looking for sites they can trust — and they’re using the STARR Certified Sites listing to find them. Certification puts your site in front of the site-selection decision-makers, signals your commitment to the highest standards of mental health research, and gives your team the tools and community connections to back it up. 

The benefits go far beyond the badge.

Why get STARR Certified?

Stand out to sponsors before they ever contact you.

If you’re not on the STARR Certified Sites list, you may not be in the room when sponsors are selecting sites. Pharma companies and CROs actively use the STARR Certified Sites listing to identify and vet sites for new studies — and certification signals that your team has the community relationships, staff training, and best practices in place to run successful trials. That’s not just visibility. It’s a head start on repeat business and longer-term sponsor relationships.

Build the community relationships your site can’t buy.

STARR does something no site can easily do on its own: we proactively identify advocacy organizations and community groups within 30 miles of your site, make warm introductions on your behalf, and track those relationships over time. The result is a site that’s genuinely embedded in the community — not just visible at one health fair a year. Trusted community partners reach more participants, retain them longer, and serve them better. That’s not goodwill. That’s infrastructure.

Give your staff the training that changes how patients feel walking out the door.

Certified sites gain access to STARR’s mental health literacy tools — including the Auditory Hallucination Simulation, the STARR 988 crisis script, and our Trauma-Informed Care training — practical resources that directly improve how staff engage with participants living with serious mental illness. When your team has a deeper understanding of what patients experience and how to care for them, everything gets better: the conversations, the retention, the outcomes.

Join the network sponsors and CROs are already paying attention to.

STARR Certified Sites are part of a growing, connected community of sites, CROs, and pharma partners advancing mental health clinical research together, sharing resources, best practices, and peer support through active workgroups, regular interactive webinars, and active visibility. The stronger the network, the stronger every site in it. And when sponsors look for partners who are embedded in that ecosystem, certified sites have a visible edge.

In a crowded field, reputation is a business advantage.

At a moment when sponsors have more site options than ever, certification is a credentialing signal that cuts through — not just to pharma and CROs, but to patients, caregivers, and the community organizations you’re trying to partner with. It tells every stakeholder that your site has made a deliberate investment in responsible, community-connected research. That reputation compounds over time.

What Does Certification Involve?

We know you’re busy, so we’ve kept it simple. Here’s what’s required each year:

    • Empathy & Stigma Reduction Training – Under an hour
      When your staff truly understands what patients with serious mental illness experience, every interaction improves — the conversations, the trust, the retention. This training delivers that shift in under an hour: We’ll moderate our Auditory Hallucination Simulation session (30 minutes), which gives patient-facing staff a firsthand perspective on what your participants live with every day.
    • Community & Advocacy Outreach – 40 hours/year – Sites that are embedded in their communities recruit faster, retain longer, and earn the kind of trust that sponsors notice. Chances are, you’re already doing this work — NAMI Walks, health fairs, community presentations all count. Forty hours over the course of a year is less than one hour per week, and most certified sites tell us they’re already there.
    • STARR 988 Crisis Response Training – 11 minutes per staff member – When a caller doesn’t meet study criteria due to suicidal ideation, what happens next matters. STARR 988 gives your screening staff a simple, structured script to pivot that conversation — assessing the situation and connecting the individual to the 988 Suicide and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline rather than simply ending the call. The training takes 11 minutes. The impact on that caller could be far greater. This is one certification element no site can afford to skip.
    • Community Assessment – You can’t build community relationships you don’t know exist. This assessment maps the mental health resources within your site’s reach — advocacy organizations, community mental health centers, faith-based programs, and other groups serving the same population you are. If you already have this information, great. If you don’t, STARR will help you build the map — and then help you use it.

    The Annual Fee

    The $2,500 Annual Fee: Think of it as a marketing investment with a measurable return. The certification fee is tax-deductible — and for many sites, it’s coverable by pharma partners as part of a study marketing budget. What you’re funding: the infrastructure, introductions, and resources STARR builds on your behalf, year-round.

     

    Next steps for Certified Sites

    • What Do Certified Sites Get?

    A credential sponsors and patients can see.

    The STARR Certified badge signals — visibly, on your website and materials — that your site meets a higher standard of community and advocacy engagement. It’s not just a logo. It’s a shortcut for sponsors, patients, and partners who are evaluating who they want to work with.

    A listing that puts you in the room
    before the conversation starts.

    Pharma companies and CROs actively use the STARR Certified Sites page to identify and vet sites for new studies. Your listing puts you in front of the decision-makers who are selecting sites right now — before they ever reach out.

    Visibility that extends beyond the listing.

    Certified sites are regularly featured in STARR newsletters, keeping your site’s work visible to a national audience of sponsors, CROs, and advocacy partners. That ongoing presence builds a documented, searchable record of your site’s community impact — one that decision-makers will find when they look you up.

    Training and tools your team can use immediately.

    Certified sites get access to the Auditory Hallucination Simulation, STARR 988 crisis response training, workgroup participation, and a growing library of community engagement resources — practical tools designed to strengthen participant interactions, improve retention, and support your staff on the front lines of mental health research.

    A certification that grows with the field.

    As new priorities emerge in mental health clinical research, STARR works with certified sites to identify them, develop best practices, and integrate them into the certification — so your site is always operating at the leading edge, not playing catch-up.

    Community connections you don’t have
    to build yourself.

    STARR proactively identifies advocacy organizations and community groups within 30 miles of your site, makes warm introductions on your behalf, and tracks those relationships over time. You get an established network — without starting from zero.

    A peer network that makes your site stronger.

    STARR Certified Sites share resources, best practices, and peer support through active workgroups and insider sessions — webinars focused on the critical topics shaping mental health research right now. Sponsors, CROs, advocacy groups, and fellow certified sites are all in the room. It’s a collaborative infrastructure built around shared goals, not just shared membership.

    Ready to Get Started?

    The first step in the Site Certification
    is the Pre-Assessment:

    Certification Pre-Assessment

    Still have questions? Visit our FAQ page!

    Contact

    The STARR Coalition is a resource for you. If you have any questions, concerns, or need assistance in any way, please email us at action@thestarr.org

    For a quick overview of the STARR Certification benefits, download the benefit sheet here.